For suppose that Balzac had had to deal with the life of Anna. He would certainly have been in no hurry to plunge into the action, he would have felt that there was much to treat before the scene was ready to open. All the initial episodes of Tolstoy's book, from Anna's first appearance until she drops into Vronsky's arms, Balzac might well have ignored entirely. He would have been too busy with his prodigious summary of the history and household of the Karenins to permit himself a glance in the direction of any particular moment, until the story could unfold from a situation thoroughly prepared. If Tolstoy had followed this course we should have lost some enchanting glimpses, but Balzac would have left not a shadow of uncertainty in the matter of Anna's disastrous passion. He would have shown precisely how she was placed in the conditions of her past, how she was exposed to this new incursion from without, and how it broke up a life which had satisfied her till then. He would have started his action in due time with his whole preliminary effect completely rendered; there would be no more question of it, no possibility that it would prove inadequate for the sequel. And all this he would have managed, no doubt, in fewer pages than Tolstoy needs for the beautiful scenes of his earlier chapters, scenes which make a perfect impression of Anna and her circle as an onlooker might happen to see them, but which fail to give the onlooker the kind of intimacy that is needed. Later on, indeed, her life is penetrated to the depths; but then it is too late to save the effect of the beginning. To the very end Anna is a wonderful woman whose early history has never been fully explained. The facts are clear, of course, and there is nothing impossible about them; but her passion for this man, the grand event of her life, has to be assumed on the word of the author. All that he really showed, to start with, was a slight, swift love-story, which might have ended as easily as it began.